Dead Lines

7: I Like This

Unedited.

Chapter Seven

It wasn’t until I was sitting in my car the next morning that I didn’t know what to do. The fight with Schylar settled in the night before as I went to sleep and after I woke up this morning, I spent every second restraining myself from calling or texting him in order to fix it. Not only did I miss him but I also didn’t know if I was supposed to pick him up for school or not. His truck wasn’t supposed to be out of the shop until Saturday or something. Apparently he did a number on his back bumper. There was no text from him that morning telling me plans had changed.

But we had a fight. Was there etiquette that went along with that? Should I break my promise just because we had a little tissy over what could be considered nothing?

For a solid ten minutes, I sat in my driveway and thought about it. I even weighed the pros and cons for each option. In the end I decided that going to get him was the only way to know for sure. No matter how mad he was at me, not showing up would be saying I was throwing in the towel on our friendship and I just couldn’t have him thinking that.

Or something to that affect.

You can imagine my surprise when I arrived at his house, knocked on his door, and had his mother tell me one of his other friends already picked him up for school five minutes before. She must’ve felt bad for me because she handed me a packet of strawberry pop tarts, told me Schylar and I would work through it, and sent me on my way.

On my drive, I went through the options in my head. Who would Schylar trust enough to drive him to school other than me? Allie? Possible since they’ve ridden together before. But since there was some tension between them, I wasn’t so sure they would survive the trip to school let alone be within the same vicinity for longer than a minute. I really hoped they would just suck it up and tell each other how they felt. It would save us all a lot of misery if they did. And maybe Allie could smooth things over between Schylar and I if I couldn’t manage to. It was a win-win.

None of the Triplets drove to school. They had their own cars but their parents refused to let them drive to the dilapidated building we called school on the grounds that the place was crumbling around us and they didn’t want the cars getting damaged.

I used to drive them to school until…

Union.

Oh that was…not to my liking at all. I didn’t have a problem with Union. In fact, we didn’t really interact anymore. He did his thing, I did mine and we tried not to linger too often around each other. He basically hung around with the Triplets and some of the members from the swim team. Hence, the reason why Schylar getting a ride with him was 100% plausible. Bev and Corey were also good options but they usually rode in together and since Schylar just went through a break up, he wasn’t going to want to be around a lovey dovey couple.

But riding with Union…

That was a low blow. He might not see it that way but to me, it felt like he was picking sides even though there really was no side to pick.

Trying to rein in my Southern temper, I took a few minutes to calm myself down and breathe before getting out of the car. I could feel my particular tugging at me, trying to give me some comfort in letting me know what was going to happen but I couldn’t do that. If I did, I was liable to scream because I knew what was coming. I knew Schylar rode in with him. I just knew it.

Trying to avoid the inevitable show and tell, I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text. I needed some back up to face the fact that my best friend had traded me in for an oversized sports utility. It didn’t take longer than a few minutes for the person I texted to show up at my car. By then I was leaning against it instead of sitting in the driver’s seat, my fingers drumming on my arm.